Sunday, April 17, 2011

"I didn't have any paper, so I'm writing my suicide note on Twitter."

About two hours ago, a Korean man serving his military duty close to the DMZ in Gangwon province left a suicide note on Twitter, which naturally spread like wildfire. Though someone was able to reach him and talk him down from what he was doing, quickly enough that he's posting as I write this, others are still posting messages trying to find him before it's too late.

Tonight at 6:46, he wrote:

"I don't see the point of living. If a flower withers, it blooms again. Why won't my flower bloom? Is life supposed to be this difficult? Why is happiness always so far away? I think it'd be more better if I was dead, yeah."

"I'm going to keep going. I'm very sorry to have caused this distress. Everyone will have a day when their flower blooms. When that day comes, the world will be a happy place. I will remember this. Once again, I'm deeply sorry.

"To military personnel, the police, firefighters and my friends on Twitter, I would like to offer a deep and sincere apology."

"군관계자분들, 경찰, 소방서, 그리고 트위터 친구 여러분들에거 정말 진심으로 사과드립니다.. 정말 죄송합니다.."

Now Lee's focus is on responding to his 900 new followers and to delete his picture from the Internet.

This incident comes a week after a professor at the prestigious university KAIST committed suicide, which in turn came after a string of suicides there, and the less-publicized suicide of a graduate of Seoul National University, Korea's most prestigious university.

In the case of the SNU graduate, the weight of expectations was a factor. It was one thing for the graduate to be unemployed, but another to be unemployed as an SNU graduate, the pinnacle of academic achievement in this country. After spending a decade in training to be great, how can life possibly match up to expectations? Even if this woman had a job, could it possibly have been good enough? Expectations rather than life itself have a lot to do with why this is the most unhappy place in the developed world.

1 comment:

Who would have known that from surfing the internet, that I would encounter something that would actually make me shed a tear. It is so upsetting that this stuff happens a lot too, the weight of pressure from so many expectations is a very heavy one indeed, making people feel that they are not able to fulfill those expectations. I know that for a fact as I too, am pressured by many. Family and educators that all expect me to live up to my siblings reputations. Either that I will become a druggie or a honor student, there are always those invisible expectations of either failure or success that people have.

And I know that this was more than half a year after you posted it, but I just needed to say what was on my mind while reading this.